Edgar Allan Poe's "A Dream within a Dream" deals with a man's struggle to find out the meaning of life. ... For example, the opening stanza of "A Dream within a Dream" starts off with a triplet, and then switches to couplets. ... He wonders whether it even matters if his life has had his love, dreams, and aspirations taken away from him because he feels that life is just a dream anyway. ... In the poem "A Dream within a Dream", Edgar Allen Poe, gives a special meaning to the poem. ... By stating that his life has been "a dream within a dream" s...

• Word Count: 781
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Poe's poem "A Dream within a Dream" contains two stanzas each describing a certain experience. ... The meaning of the poem "A Dream within a Dream" is that everything in life is so fleeting and fragile, it is even more distant than a dream. ... "All that we see or seem/ Is but a dream within a dream.... "Is all that we see or seem/But a dream within a dream?... Perhaps life itself is just a dream within a dream....

• Word Count: 1125
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Generally, Eliot is disgruntled by the profound imperfections in men within his social order; which include two-facedness, laziness and indifference. ... This place of nothingness is what Eliot means by "death's dream Kingdom." ... The poet perpetually refers to images like kingdom, death's dream, and eyes as a way to understand death and time without end. ... Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom Let me go nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear deliberate disguises Once the poet has experienced dream's kingdom the des...

• Word Count: 1435
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

In the murky gloom of sleep he find his dream. ... Soon the focus of the slave's dream shifts to his family. ... Here a sense of sympathy arises within us and we see how the slave's actuality was far from his vivid dreams and how he has only these dreams to resort to and seek comfort from. ... We now witness another episode of the slave's dream. ... He feels the true elation of his dreams as gallops past the stream. ...

• Word Count: 986
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

"The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" is a dark reflection on lost love, death, and loss of hope. The poem examines the emotions of a young man who has lost his lover to death and who tries unsuccessfully to distract himself from his sadness through books. Books, however, pro...

• Word Count: 459
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Within the poem "Dark Pines under Water," Gwendolyn MacEwen describes an internal journey, in the mind of the reader, through a mysterious dream. This whole dream is shrouded by thought-provoking ideas that clouds the mind on what the final destination is or what the reader's soul wants it to be, for it is never defined. ... Within the first and second stanza, the "you" is utilized. ... For the reader, it can be only what they see within/as their soul or core: identity, art or maybe nature. ... MacEwen leads the reader through a journey into internality, where one mu...

• Word Count: 552
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

In Hughes's extremely short poem, "Harlem", the poet asks "What happens to a dream deferred?" ... He is trying to interpret the meaning within the urn. ... Although Hughes and Keats differ greatly in tone and imagery, they share many similarities in their dreams played out in their writing. ... While Hughes's dreams are only temporarily deferred and Keats" dreams of fulfillment are fading, they both have experienced a death of spirit. ...

• Word Count: 891
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

The author needed to look for a place where he felt protected; a shelter within nature to escape from his fear. ... Within her he can find safety which Wordsworth represents with a willow tree. ... At the beginning the author is filled up with dreams, hope, strength and vitality. ... A disturbing memory of the past hunts his present by "moving slowly through [his] mind by day, and [are] a trouble to [his] dreams. ... But later on a force that he couldn't control made him end up loosing faith in all his dreams. ...

• Word Count: 797
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Some published editions of the poem do not make a division between The Proem and The Dream. ... Not even the famous Biblical interpreter of dreams, Joseph, who read dreams for Pharaoh (see  Genesis, Book 41), nor Macrobius, the late Roman author who wrote a famous (in Chaucer's day) commentary on  Cicero's  Dream of Scipio, would have the skill to read the fantastic dream the narrator had that night. ... The fact that both of the dreams described in these references contained important commentary on real events foreshadows that the narrator's dream will do the same. ... The B...

• Word Count: 5753
• Approx Pages: 23
• Grade Level: High School

As the narrator is wandering in a dream-like world, he is startled to see two lovers in the distance. ... It compels the desire to dig deeper into the mind to reveal all contours within. ... Once again, Keats refers to an unmapped area of the mind where dreams of improving the quality of life are realized and what is personified as the dark valley becomes a lightened path of knowledge and discovery. ... He is caught between the real world where emotions have to be dealt with and a dream-like state where all truth and ideas are free. ... Keats narrows in on the power that holds everyone f...

• Word Count: 1317
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Wilfred Owen wrote Dulce et Decorum Est about the first World War, in which he had personally fought. It was addressed to Jessie Pope, a writer of other poems concerning the War. Specifically he wrote the poem to counteract her poem "Who's For The Game?". Owen felt that Pope did not comprehend the s...

• Word Count: 2354
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

Brathwaite used these tools to express two separate tones and themes within his poem. ... He was creating life within his wood piece, and it was taking shape. ... Brathwaite said the carpenter was one with a great knowledge of Africa within himself. Edward said it was the Sunday shop that allowed the carpenter to do Amore that just dream of it, but.. in his own quiet way, to realize it, within his own art and craft....

• Word Count: 526
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Tom, an innocent child, shares his dreams of angels and the salvation of the sweeps: "And by came an angel who had a bright key, And he open'd the coffins & set them all free;" This sort of social consciousness in literature, stimulated by the French Revolution, also allows Blake to show in the second poem, through an experienced narrator, the true plight of child laborers: "Crying'weep! ... In the first poem, the child dreams of salvation; a child's nave hope of something better. ... These poems fit into the Romantic tradition because they focus on the commonplace, force the...

• Word Count: 1853
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

Hopes and dreams can be fostered through the power of integrity and courage. ... (Hughes, "I, Too" 807) The male character knows his place within the walls of the family he works for but, he also knows that he is buying time within the walls too. ...

• Word Count: 624
• Approx Pages: 2
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

His claustrophobic mood becomes evident when he talks of the "wintry bed" (6) and "The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low/ Each like a corpse within its grave, until/ Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow" (7-9). ... Shelley proposes that, if the power was to stay firmly "within his [mankind's] heart-, then humanity would become "immortal and omnipotent-. Thus, implying that the power has to stay within people in order for death to become a "dying flame-. ... After receiving no response, he that the power he was searching for was within himself; hence, he "shrieked, and cla...

• Word Count: 1748
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

She then follows on with the line, "then all a world I made in me/all the world you hear and see/hung upon my dreaming blood-, perhaps saying, this child within her means the world to her, and in return she created the life of her child, giving her child the world. In her poem "Woman to Man-, personal pronouns such as I', my' and our' are used signifying her personal experience within the subject. ... In "Woman to Man-, the third stanza describes that this child within her, will contain a little bit of both of them. ... For her child's life must end within her, but b...

• Word Count: 655
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Ulysses is a poem about a mighty king who decides to pass his thrown to his son to pursue his dream of traveling the world. ... The speaker has a listener within the poem, but we too are his/her listener, and we learn about the speaker's character from what the speaker says. ... It is a kind of dream, a means of escape momentarily from the uncongenial environment of Ithaca" (Landow). ...

• Word Count: 982
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

As the creator of all things natural, God is responsible for the "leaping greenly spirits of trees- and the "blue true dream of sky- that fascinate and enthrall the speaker.These phrases, found in the first stanza of the poem, show how Cummings uses diction, color symbolism, and imagery to relate to the idea of rebirth.The spirit of a group is the essential nature of that group, the basic feelings and ideas that it holds.Trees are one of the most basic symbols representing nature.Therefore, by thanking God for the "leaping greenly spirits of trees,"" the speaker is showing how much he appreci...

• Word Count: 2203
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

The information within those two lines establishes the theme for the entire poem. ... The two similes embedded within the two lines explain how close she expects her lover and herself to be. ... Despite the situation with her lover still only a spirit in her eyes, the poet continues to carry on her dream of becoming completely harmonious with him, similar to nature where light becomes so lost in another light, the two are seen and regarded to as one. ...

• Word Count: 717
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Woodchucks Maxine Kumin's, Woodchucks provides perspective into the mind state of those influenced by nazi warfare. What begins as a seemingly humorous cat and mouse hunt, soon develops into an insatiable lust for blood. Kumin's descriptive language provides the reader with the insight necessary...

• Word Count: 819
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

I stood there for a long time, peering deep into that darkness, wondering, fearing, doubting and dreaming dreams no being ever dared to dream before (25-26). ... I turned back into my chamber, all my soul within me radiating, and soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before (31-32). ... By that Heaven that exists above us- by the God we both honor- tell my sad soul if, within the distant Aidenn, there waits a saintly maiden called Lenore (91-95). ...

• Word Count: 2508
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

In section 13 another notion is presented; to Tennyson, time is something that oscillates along a past-present-past-present continuum, we can experience the immanence of the past, then the past resurfaces in the present, patterning natural or human cyclical phenomena, moreover the past links to the present in which dreams and illusions intertwine with reality. As we can see in section 13 the poet is confused by this intertwining of dream and reality and I think that for the poet the appropriate solution is death, in order to remove this grief.  ...

• Word Count: 5237
• Approx Pages: 21
• Grade Level: High School

They are made insecure by the speaker challenging the way their lives are lived because he lives his life differently, and is content with it when he says "The shame I win for singing is all mine/ The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours."" ... In other words, a person is incapable of seeing depth within the physical. ... He lost this hope that maintained him for a short time due to the fact that even the hard working people that "waited for the light- refused to recognize the light, or truth, that was within Richard Cory. ... Aunt Imogen could never appreciate the fact that people loved ...

• Word Count: 1536
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Illusion is a false impression or delusion, so when an illusion is used within a poem there is a deeper meaning or reality behind the words. ... This gives the reader the illusion that Prestatyn will be the holiday of their dreams. ...

• Word Count: 1300
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

This line suggests that the urn and it's stories remain unravished--or uncorrupted and are a model of timelessness within time. ... Humans tend to live in the past -- reminiscing or regretting, or in the future -- hoping and dreaming. ...

• Word Count: 1262
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School